Social media misleads young on gender transitioning, says UK review leader

Hilary Cass, who led youth gender identity services review, warns of ‘unrealistic images and expectations’

The expert who led the review into youth gender identity services has said young people are being misinformed by “unrealistic” portrayals of transitioning on social media.

Hilary Cass, the British paediatrician whose review of NHS gender care led to a significant shift including a ban on puberty blockers, warned of “unrealistic images and expectations on social media” when it came to “what transition would really mean and how hard it would be”, including “quite intensive medical treatments” and “sometimes quite brutal surgeries”.

Lady Cass told Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg: “There are a tiny number of people who will never be comfortable with their biological sex, with the gender associated with their biological sex. For them, a medical pathway is the only way they’re going to live their life comfortably.

“We don’t understand why that is, but we have to try to help those people thrive as much as the young people who are going to grow out of this.”

Cass said she believed that the number of children who have gender dysphoria is increasing due to social media and gender stereotypes.

“I think what has kind of misled children is the belief that if you are not a typical girl, if you like playing with trucks, or boys who like dressing up or that you have same-sex attraction, that means that you’re trans and actually it’s not like that, but those are all normal variations,” she said.

“I think children and young people were being given a narrative that it’s not OK to be anything but absolutely typical of the other girls on Instagram.”

Cass welcomed the draft guidelines on gender identity for schools published by the Department for Education on Thursday, noting they did “a good job of explaining that you have to be particularly careful about pre-pubescent young children” because socially transitioning too early can get them “locked on to a trajectory that may not have been the correct natural trajectory for them”. But she acknowledged that the guidance could not be “completely foolproof”.

The proposed guidance, which is informed by the Cass review and subject to a 10-week consultation, states schools should avoid “rigid rules based on gender stereotypes” and should take time to understand children’s feelings. It also removes the outright ban on primary school-age children socially transitioning, though suggests this should be very rare.

The other main change is that schools should seek parents’ views, apart from in “rare circumstances where involving parents or carers would constitute a greater risk to the child than not involving them”.

If a child or their parent makes a request for them to socially transition, schools should take a “careful approach”, the guidance says, informed by parents’ views and clinical advice.

For socially transitioning students, schools and colleges should “sensitively explain” they will not have access to toilets, changing rooms or residential accommodation designated for the opposite sex.

Asked if children had been let down by the adult-led debate on gender reassignment, Cass said she feared they had been “weaponised”.

“[They] were also caught up in all the issues about single-sex spaces and sports and safe areas for women which were actually not to do with the children but they were somehow part of a football within it. That’s a real shame,” she said.